Bashar Al-Assad As Model Dad?
Al-Assad in 2004 Image by Getty Images
His horrific actions against his own people are well known, as is his hatred of Israel and funding for terror against Israeli targets. But in a set of photographs obtained by a British newspaper, Syria’s just-clinging-on-to-power President Bashar al-Assad is portrayed with his wife and kids as the ultimate relaxed, Western-oriented happy parent.
The 14-photograph album published in the Daily Telegraph shows the al-Assads doing normal family things: taking care of the kids, eating at a restaurant, playing and cycling. It also presents them as relaxed and down to earth in the kind of circumstances that most families don’t find themselves, such as on a posh presidential jet.
The pictures appear to have been taken five to seven years ago, at a time when Assad’s rule was relatively new, and could have gone either way — there was talk of him opening up Syria and loosening the regimes grip, and of introducing democracy. The photographs portrayed a family that still had a certain appeal, and to some represented hope. It’s worth noting not only the fact they were pictured doing normal things, but also extent to which the outfits of the First Lady Asma Assad are Western — short sleeves and a baseball cap in one, slightly risqué leather pants in another.
Maybe photographs from this album will hang on the walls of museums in the future, to encapsulate the regime that had a chance, and even seemed tempted, to change its path, but didn’t and met the fate of the region’s other dictatorships after the Arab Spring of 2011.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
